one day."

And when Tristan said: "I will take it on the morrow;"

The King added: "Aye, and before day dawn."

But, as the peers slept all round the King their lord, that night, a
mad thought took Tristan that, before he rode, he knew not for how
long, before dawn he would say a last word to the Queen. And there was
a spear length in the darkness between them. Now the dwarf slept with
the rest in the King's chamber, and when he thought that all slept he
rose and scattered the flour silently in the spear length that lay
between Tristan and the Queen; but Tristan watched and saw him, and
said to himself:

"It is to mark my footsteps, but there shall be no marks to show."

At midnight, when all was dark in the room, no candle nor any lamp
glimmering, the King went out silently by the door and with him the
dwarf. Then Tristan rose in the darkness and judged the spear length
and leapt the space between, for his farewell. But that day in the
hunt a boar had wounded him in the leg, and in this effort the wound
bled. He did not feel it or see it in the darkness, but the blood
dripped upon the couches and the flour strewn between; and outside in
the moonlight the dwarf read the heavens and knew what had been done
and he cried:

"Enter, my King, and if you do not hold them, hang me high."

Then the King and the dwarf and the four felons ran in with lights and
noise, and though Tristan had regained his place there was the blood
for witness, and though Iseult feigned sleep, and Perinis too, who lay
at Tristan's feet, yet there was the blood for witness. And the King
looked in silence at the blood where it lay upon the bed and the
boards and trampled into the flour.

And the four barons held Tristan down upon his bed and mocked the
Queen also, promising her full justice; and they bared and showed the
wound whence the blood flowed.

Then the King said:

"Tristan, now nothing longer holds. To-morrow you shall die."

And Tristan answered:

"Have mercy, Lord, in the name of God that suffered the Cross!"

But the felons called on the King to take vengeance, saying:

"Do justice, King: take vengeance."

And Tristan went on, "Have mercy, not on me--for why should I stand at
dying?--Truly, but for you, I would have sold my honour high to cowards
who, under your peace, have put hands on my body--but in homage to you
I have yielded and you may do with me what you will. But, lord,
remember the Queen!"

And as he knelt at